If you want to talk shop, I can often be found playing with friend and steamer Kennigma on twitch.tv/kennigma.

Introduction to Thrall Builds! Thrall is a melee assassin, meaning you need to be up in someone's face to do your damage. Thrall is usually a burst assassin, wanting to pop all of his abilities and drop someone quick, but he does have builds that are more sustain-friendly due to his healing trait. Thrall's biggest weakness is being crowd-controlled, which means he's not only doing zero damage, but also zero healing due to Frostwolf Resilience. His second biggest weakness is his mana pool and mana-hungry abilities. If you use your abilities way too much, he'll be out of mana quickly, and useless until he gets back to base. As such, new Thrall players may prefer a safer build that conserves mana and makes Thrall more sustain than burst. Experienced Thrall players just learn how to manage their mana effectively by being judicious in their use of abilities.

Thrall attacks sort of like other melee assassins, particularly like Zeratul, where he works best by coming in from the sides of a team fight and bursting down someone out of position or diving the back line, possibly opening with Sundering to split the enemy team up or isolate someone. Thrall also loves playing against other dive assassins, as he can wade in after they dive and punish them hard. However, unlike Zeratul or Kerrigan, Thrall would prefer to stay in the fight, rather than swing out and wait for cooldowns. Thrall, even when laning in the early game, really wants to have his gank-face on at all times. This includes team fights. You should be looking for ganks on someone out of position and likely will be the 4th or 5th Hero to engage a fight on your team. Often, you will want to stay mounted (unless poking with Chain Lightning until you have a chance to ride in and root them with Feral Spirit and lay them open with your burst. Always be in gank mode!

Thrall is a great lane bully in the early phases of the game with his Frostwolf Resilience for sustain healing. In fact, he really has no issues except for the biggest lane bullies in the game ( Zagara or Sonya). This means if you're not in gank mode early, Thrall is quite happy to babysit a lane alone while the rest of the team goes hunting.

Thrall's talents are actually in a pretty good place right now, which is weird. When the game launched, Thrall was considered to really have one necessary build based around Windfury talents. Not much has changed for Thrall since, except a recent bug fix in his Auto Attack animation that used to negate some of his damage done. Now, however, you can pretty much make situational choices at most every tier, but there are still some builds you can stick to for a backbone. In fact, builds around Chain Lightning are becoming popular for poke damage right now. If anything has really changed since launch, it's been Follow Through being noticed, first on Zeratul, and becoming popular.

Let's also get this out of the way: You won't find Wind Shear in some of these builds. It leads to more health gain from Frostwolf Resilience and good damage, but it also saps your mana quickly. However, yes, you can swap in Wind Shear at level 7 for Follow Through at any time, but be aware that it will cost you mana and your playstyle won't be quite the same as you don't need to weave those Auto Attack hits in. Honestly, I just prefer the Follow Through style. Your mileage will vary. :)

There are other ways to play Thrall. As I mentioned earlier, he doesn't have a rigid build anymore as much as he has a bunch of swappable talents you can mix and match to what works best for you.

Cho'gall patch updates

General Notes: Thrall didn't get direct changes with the Cho'gall patch, but the scaling changes did have an impact. It's still early to tell, but Thrall's early game power may be better than it was before, making him a decent lane presence and bully, like the melee assassin he should be.

BUILD: COMPETITIVE THRALL

Picks

Rolling Thunder

Ride the Lightning

Follow Through

Sundering

Giant Killer

Tempest Fury

Bolt of the Storm

Alts

Spell Shield

This build plays off Chain Lightning much more, both for poke damage, but also as part of the Follow Through burst damage as you wade into a fight and punish an enemy squishy. Some players are not that great about timing Thrall's attacks from the sides on team fights, or just know they won't find an easy opening based on the enemy team comp. Relying a bit more on Chain Lightning means more poke damage so you can contribute while looking for an opening on someone over-committing to a fight or caught out of position on the wings. This build is very competitive for a Thrall looking to score early gank kills or to solo bully a lane against almost anyone.

This build is pretty straightforward, with the typical Spell Shield or Giant Killer choice dependent on whether you're being nuked or up against a high health team. I default to Giant Killer since that will still always improve damage output.

BUILD: BURST THRALL

Picks

Seasoned Marksman

Envenom

Follow Through

Sundering

Grace of Air

Tempest Fury

Nexus Blades

Alts

Block

Wind Shear

Giant Killer

Spell Shield

Bolt of the Storm

This build is about bursting your target down as fast as possible. Any time you see a build that includes Follow Through, you need to make sure you can play around that talent to get the most out of it. This means dropping Auto Attack hits after every basic ability that you pop. For instance, Feral Spirit to root + Auto Attack + Windfury + Auto Attack + Chain Lightning + Auto Attack. This is then followed with Envenom.

If you're up against 2-3+ high health warriors, Giant Killer becomes a viable swap at level 13 (and pairs well with Seasoned Marksman. But if you're up against a mage-heavy team that is nuking you pretty hard with ability damage, Spell Shield can help as well, but give Grace Of Air (and its synergy with Tempest Fury at level 16) a chance in games before you write it off and fall back to Spell Shield as your pick versus mages. Bolt of the Storm is also an ok talent to swap in at level 20, if you need a little extra survivability. Against a team heavy with Auto Attack damage, Block at level 1 is an ok survival talent as well.

At level 20, you really want to go with Nexus Blades for more damage and easier pursuit, unless you have some particular reason to pick up Bolt of the Storm. There are no other real choices at that level on any build.

BUILD: SAFER THRALL

Picks

Rolling Thunder

Mana Tide

Wind Shear

Sundering

Grace of Air

Tempest Fury

Nexus Blades

Alts

Rabid Wolves

Another name for this build might be a more sustain build, but really, this build is for players who have mana issues with Thrall. Typically, this will be for players new to Thrall, until they get used to his abilities and mana usage and start to adjust their playstyle so they don't have to rely on these talents. This build can definitely have more merit in general on maps with area control objectives, where you need to control an area for a while and might want the extra sustain.

Rolling Thunder and Mana Tide directly help your mana situation. The rest of the build really is a basic Windfury build, and is a very straight-forward way to play Thrall. Just make sure you attack from the sides to punish anyone out of position, and learn how to use Sundering for best effect.

At level 1, you can go for Rabid Wolves for more sustain, or even Block if you're up against a team heavy with Auto Attack hitters.

ABOUT ME
I'm an aggressively casual player looking to climb the ranks and enjoy my free time in Heroes of the Storm. If you want to talk shop, I can often be found playing with friend and steamer Kennigma on twitch.tv/kennigma.